Thomas Hawk posted a photo:
"For one 20-something defender of Scotland's Stirling Castle, death came from above—and arrived very, very quickly. Known to archaeologists as Skeleton 150, the man was killed more than 700 years ago by a massive blow that shattered his skeleton in dozens of places before pinning him to the ground."
Experts Fearful as MAGA-Linked Oil Company Prepares Unauthorized Drilling. As The Guardian reported, Greenland's government issued a "strong warning" last week after learning that a Texas oil company called Greenland Energy had begun making unauthorized preparations for oil extraction in Jameson Land, a remote area of eastern Greenland, including bringing drilling materials ashore.
The company, founded last year, has claimed that Jameson Land may contain $1 trillion worth of crude oil and announced plans to drill two wells there—a project that requires approval from Greenland's government.
COLUMBIA (ANP/RTR) - Darline Graham gaat door naar de tweede ronde voor de Republikeinse senaatsnominatie in South Carolina.De 62-jarige Graham is een van de twee kandidaten die doorgaan naar de zogenoemde run-off in augustus. Daarin neemt ze het op tegen de nummer twee van de voorverkiezing, Ralph Norman.
De run-off is nodig omdat geen van de kandidaten bij de voorverkiezing meer dan 50 procent van de stemmen behaalde.
Graham had zich tot vorige maand nooit kandidaat gesteld voor een verkiesbaar ambt. Ze werd door de gouverneur van South Carolina benoemd tot senator nadat haar broer Lindsey Graham overleed. Niet lang daarna stelde ze zich verkiesbaar voor de zetel. President Donald Trump steunt haar kandidatuur.
In november vinden de tussentijdse verkiezingen plaats in de Verenigde Staten. Dan neemt de Democratische kandidaat Annie Andrews het op tegen de winnaar van de run-off.
Just a few months ahead of an election, the prime minister said he had the full support of his party, after calling crisis meeting to address leadership speculation
New Zealand’s prime minister Christopher Luxon has survived a second leadership showdown in four months, just 87 days out from the country’s general election.
Talking to media after a three-hour meeting of his MPs in Wellington on Wednesday, the embattled leader said he had the full support of his party.
Continue reading...The Comac C919 will fly from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia, although experts say it could take generations for it to challenge the west’s dominance of the industry
China hopes to break into the world of commercial aviation with the first international flight of a Chinese-made passenger jet scheduled for Wednesday.
The Comac C919 will take off from Beijing capital international airport at 3pm, landing in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, just over two hours later.
Continue reading...Nearly 500 personnel battle Timber fire in Los Padres national forest as blaze grows to 3,000 acres
Evacuations have been ordered for areas along California’s famous Big Sur coast as a wildfire burns in the nearby steep, rugged mountains.
The Timber fire in Monterey county started on Sunday and grew to nearly 3,000 acres by Tuesday evening, according to Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency. Nearly 500 fire personnel had been assigned to the fire in the Los Padres national forest.
Continue reading...Zelenskyy warns Putin will use Russian election, in which opposition to the war is banned, as pretext for major call-up of troops. What we know on day 1,631
Russian forces used ballistic missiles supplied by North Korea, Ukraine’s president said, in an attack on the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia where the Metinvest steel company said seven civilian workers at its plant were killed and 21 injured. Three more civilians, including a 15-year-old boy, were killed by Russian drones and artillery in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, authorities said. Russia used missiles, drones and glide bombs to attack Ukrainian cities on Tuesday, said Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president. One strike hit the grounds of a children’s hospital, leaving two craters but not hurting anyone, the State Emergency Service said.
Ukraine’s military general staff said its forces struck an oil refinery in the city of Orsk in Russia’s Orenburg region near the border with Kazakhstan, about 1,500km (930 miles) from Ukraine, causing a fire. The refinery can process about 44m barrels of crude oil a year to produce gasoline, diesel, aviation fuel and other products. The Russian online retailer Wildberries said its logistical facilities in the Voronezh region of Russia near the Ukrainian border came under attack and caught fire.
Romania’s defence ministry said its navy destroyed two suspected Russian drones drifting in the Black Sea about 90 nautical miles (166km) from the port of Constanta. The Gerbera-type drones – a cut-price Russian version of the Shahed – were blown up by divers and some pieces were recovered, the ministry said, adding that Ukraine said the drones were not theirs.
Russia is aiming to exploit Kyiv’s critical shortage of Patriot air defence interceptors that can stop ballistic missiles, Zelenskyy said, adding that Moscow is preparing to recruit more troops for a new push on the frontline. “Every step Russia takes – increasing ballistic missile production, bringing in North Korean equipment, preparing for mobilisation – all of this shows that Moscow is preparing not for peace, but for escalation,” Zelenskyy posted. He was warned in recent days that North Korea is preparing to send up to 50,000 more troops to Russia.
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian intelligence suggested Russia would use its “pseudo-election” in September as a pretext to declare a new mobilisation. Mobilisation involves the use of reservists and conscripts, which in 2022 led to protests in Russia such as recruiting offices being set on fire. “They are preparing for mobilisation in the autumn, immediately after the imitation of parliamentary elections,” Zelenskyy said as part of a plan to “create the appearance that Russians supposedly support the war”. Russia’s supreme court on Monday barred the Yabloko party, the only officially registered party that opposes Moscow’s war in Ukraine, from competing in the election. Zelenskyy continued: “Then, following the so-called election, he plans an additional rapid mobilisation of several hundred thousand Russians by the end of the year, plus another similar number next year.”
Zelenskyy said Ukraine had handed proposals to US negotiators for a plan to end the war with Moscow. Zelenskyy offered no details on the proposals. US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were last in Moscow in January and have not yet visited Kyiv. The Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank, has said in an analysis that the Kremlin will not seriously negotiate as long as Putin believes he might still reach his full objectives. “Ukraine’s Patriot shortages offer Russia an opportunity to cause very serious damage to Ukraine over the coming winter and will therefore contribute to delaying meaningful negotiations and protracting the war.”
The UN estimates that more than 16,000 civilians detained by Russia during the war are still being “deprived of their liberty”, with many held incommunicado and on grounds that don’t comply with international law. “Widespread and systematic torture and ill-treatment” of both Ukrainian civilian detainees and prisoners of war by Russia are continuing, including sexual violence, said Claudia Fuentes Julio, the UN assistant secretary general for human rights.
Continue reading...Prime minister Anutin Charnvirakul calls for tighter gun controls and ‘decisive penalties’ after nine dead in school shooting
Thailand has suspended firearms licences after last week’s deadly school shooting, as the bodies of the teenage attacker and the grandparents he killed were cremated.
The prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, said he had ordered the interior ministry and police to stop issuing licenses to possess, purchase and carry firearms, and called for “tighter controls and decisive penalties”.
Continue reading...Officers – correctly – may not have fully unzipped the bag containing the lifelike doll to avoid destroying evidence, one expert says
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Revelations that a “body” found inside a suitcase was actually a sex doll may have been embarrassing for police, but experts say officers followed the correct procedure.
New South Wales police on Sunday were called to Oallen, a rural locality near Goulburn, after two members of the public found a suitcase containing what they believed to be human remains dumped on the side of the road.
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Peter Bellars has added a photo to the pool:
Voigtlander Bessa RF (6x9), Acros 100. Microfine. 13 mins.
The governor of India’s Reserve Bank wants the nation’s financial institutions to use AI to approve loans that human assessors would likely reject. In a speech delivered yesterday at the FIBAC conference in Mumbai, Sanjay Malhotra said the regulator “sees AI as a capability to be responsibly harnessed and not merely as a risk to be contained,” then offered several reasons to support that statement. The first reason is that banks currently find it hard to justify loans to first-time borrowers, gig workers, or small businesses that don’t keep formal books. “AI models, trained on alternative data – cash flows, GST filings, utility payments, digital footprints – can extend the frontier of ‘bankable’ India considerably further than manual underwriting ever could, at a fraction of the marginal cost per loan,” Malhotra argued. That’s a reference to the fact that India, like many other developing nations, has many people who either lack access to banks entirely or are “underbanked,” meaning they use alternative and/or unregulated lenders that could come with high costs. “Predictive models can identify borrowers on the cusp of default early enough to counsel rather than merely recover,” he added. “Used well, AI may be the most powerful accelerator to financial inclusion.” One way the tech can make that happen is if Indian banks use AI to develop voice interfaces in local languages. India recognizes 14 major languages that are spoken by ten million or more residents, plus another eight languages felt to be an important part of the nation’s heritage. Literacy rates in rural areas remain below 80 percent. Malhotra therefore thinks AI can help more people to work with banks. The governor added his view that “AI-enhanced credit risk models, liquidity forecasting, and scenario analysis allow banks – and, indeed, us, as the regulator – to see emerging stress earlier than lagging financial statements permit.” Malhotra also thinks AI could improve Indian banks’ customer service. “A relationship manager assisted by an AI system that presents the right product, the right risk flag, can serve a higher number of customers more efficiently,” he said. “AI-assisted grievance redressal, and personalised financial guidance can enhance service quality to customers.” The governor is not blind to perils posed by AI and devoted a section of his speech to what he described as “Risks we must keep firmly in view.” The first of those risks is what he called “The black box problem.” “Many advanced AI models – particularly deep learning and generative systems – do not readily explain their own reasoning,” he observed. “When an AI system recommends against extending credit to a small business, both the borrower and the regulator are entitled to know why.” Beyond courtesy to customers, Malhotra worries that opaque AI decision-making “makes it exceedingly difficult for auditors, boards, and the Reserve Bank to be confident that a model is doing what it was designed to do.” He also worries that AI could perpetuate “biases against certain geographies, certain occupations, certain communities.” Dependence on a cluster of tech companies also concerns the banking boss, who fears several AI providers could offer flawed systems that spread a risk across India’s banking system. He therefore set down a marker. “No matter how sophisticated the model, the responsibility for a bank's decisions rests with the bank, not with its algorithm,” he said. “‘The model decided’ can never be an acceptable answer to a customer, an auditor, or the Reserve Bank. Meaningful human oversight – the ability to explain, to intervene, and, where necessary, to override – must remain a design principle, not an afterthought.” He also set the following expectations for Indian banks’ use of AI: Maintain a complete inventory of every AI system in use – including those embedded in vendor products – so that neither you nor we are ever surprised by what is running inside your institution. Establish board-approved AI governance policies, with clear accountability for outcomes, not merely for technology procurement. Build the capacity to explain AI-driven decisions that materially affect a customer, particularly in lending and fraud outcomes. Red-team and stress-test AI systems before deployment and periodically thereafter, just as you would stress-test any other material risk. Preserve meaningful human oversight at every point where an AI system's error could cause material harm to a customer or to financial stability. “The banks that will win in the AI era will not necessarily be the ones that adopt the most AI, or the fastest,” he concluded. “They will be the ones that adopt it with the deepest understanding of what they are deploying, the clearest accountability for its outcomes, and the strongest commitment to the customer's trust that has always been, and will remain, the true capital of Indian banking.” ®
Cloudflare data suggests desktop Linux usage in North America has climbed to 6.4%, up from 4.1% a year earlier, with one post-holiday workday briefly spiking to 22%. ZDNet reports: [B]elieve it or not, on Monday, July 6, when people were back after the July 4 holiday, Linux usage jumped to a high of 22%. The users of these systems are not AI agents or bots, but real people. I set Cloudflare to count humans rather than bots. If you include people and bots, Linux has a 9.7% market share. That proportion is similar to StatCounter's score. By Cloudflare's count, bots alone come to 19%.
These numbers tell us that workers are leading the way to the Linux desktop. [...] However, past performance doesn't explain present trends. So, why are we now seeing such a bump in Linux desktop growth? Experts believe this trend is largely AI developers and Linux users running AI Agents. For example, as David Linthicum, former managing director and chief cloud strategy officer at Deloitte Consulting and AI and cloud influencer, recently observed, while "Windows 11 can technically run local AI workloads, but as you begin using multiple tools, managing different projects, and installing various dependencies, the friction starts to build," it's a different story for Linux users.
Linthicum continued: "Linux delivered what I can only describe as a true 'AI desktop' experience. Setup was straightforward, mainstream AI instructions matched what you'd actually see in your environment, and GPU-accelerated apps simply worked -- consistently. I spent far less time troubleshooting and far more time actually executing on projects." As for agents, Linux Foundation CEO Jim Zemlin summed up their role succinctly: "Linux is the OS of choice for AI agents." Desktop Linux is also gaining momentum as frustration with Windows 11 and the end of Windows 10 support push users to alternatives, particularly on older PCs that can't officially upgrade. At the same time, Linux has become much easier to use, install software on, and game with, lowering many of the traditional barriers to switching.
These numbers tell us that workers are leading the way to the Linux desktop. [...] However, past performance doesn't explain present trends. So, why are we now seeing such a bump in Linux desktop growth? Experts believe this trend is largely AI developers and Linux users running AI Agents. For example, as David Linthicum, former managing director and chief cloud strategy officer at Deloitte Consulting and AI and cloud influencer, recently observed, while "Windows 11 can technically run local AI workloads, but as you begin using multiple tools, managing different projects, and installing various dependencies, the friction starts to build," it's a different story for Linux users.
Linthicum continued: "Linux delivered what I can only describe as a true 'AI desktop' experience. Setup was straightforward, mainstream AI instructions matched what you'd actually see in your environment, and GPU-accelerated apps simply worked -- consistently. I spent far less time troubleshooting and far more time actually executing on projects." As for agents, Linux Foundation CEO Jim Zemlin summed up their role succinctly: "Linux is the OS of choice for AI agents." Desktop Linux is also gaining momentum as frustration with Windows 11 and the end of Windows 10 support push users to alternatives, particularly on older PCs that can't officially upgrade. At the same time, Linux has become much easier to use, install software on, and game with, lowering many of the traditional barriers to switching.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.